After The Pandemic – Young Smith: Matriarchy (1) (616 hits)
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Rating: 1.3 on 22 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2008-09-03 17:36:03 EDT
Smith ran, leaving a suspended trail of cooling exhaled gasses in his wake. Heavy hooves pounded the ground behind him, the sound clear and close in the crisp November air. Teeth snapped an inch from his left ear and the towering beast's hot breath went down the back of his shirt in moist jets. He dodged to the right, behind the cover of a stand of green pines, his feet crunching loudly on windblown leaves.
--
He had been west to the sea called Pacific.
To the south were long beaches and the weather was pleasant, but the cities were in ruins and the human inhabitants were dangerous lunatics. Smith narrowly avoided a life of slavery when he fled from the Empire of Kelifoornya. The leech army there wore white shirts and matching dark jackets and pants and colorful strips of cloth around their necks. They called themselves Bewrocrats and they served the Reichsführer of the West, a man they reverently called the Black Plowman. The Reichsführer was said to be huge and muscular, strong enough to tear a man in two.
Further north it was cooler, and rain fell constantly. Smith heard that one fourth of the way around the world was a place that was home to people with yellow skin. Smith thought that was ridiculous. Besides, the man who told him that wanted to see Smith's brain.
"Do you have a hole?" the hole-man had asked. "I have a hole. Do you have a hole?"
Smith had initially assumed the man was looking for a bumpal. It had taken him a moment to realize the man wanted to see his brain. He had been in a small village, asking for directions to a larger town and trying to barter a soft, insulating wrap he had made out of rabbit hides. Most of the people in the hole-man's settlement were old and addled, yet kind. Smith had met the hole-man on a knife-edge of the rough coastline overlooking the surging sea.
The hole-man was missing half of his skull, and his own brain was visible under a curved glass covering. A stamp in the glass said PYREX. The hole-man had thought Smith was pretty and said he suspected Smith had a pretty brain. The man also offered up his daughter.
"She is quite lovely. Show me the hole in your skull and let me take a peek and you can do the wet-slap with her."
Smith didn't barter for sex as he knew some did. He had not had sex yet. He thought he was eighteen years old, but he couldn't be sure. He seemed to be taking a long time to go through puberty, which he would have pronounced as pooburty since he had read about it in books and had never heard the word spoken aloud. Smith was self-educated; from moldering books, a few rare battery-operated talking boxes, and by the people he had met, good and bad, when he had set out on the long road eight years ago. He still felt like a boy. He wanted to be a man.
A white gull had flown overhead and let out a forlorn cry. Smith heard the glass cover over the hole-man's head ring in response, the way a drinking glass will sing if you run a wet finger around the edge. The hole-man had winced and shouted, "The nineteen forty-nine World Series line-up for the Yankees was Hank Bauer, Yogi Berra, Bobby Brown, Tommy Byrne, Jerry Coleman, Joe DiMaggio, Tommy—"
Smith had rapped on the glass with his knuckles and the hole-man cursed at him. He had begun asking the hole-man about settlements further north along the coast when the gull cried out again.
The hole-man had shouted, "Show me your hole!"
Smith had decided it was time to move on.
The hole-man had drawn a deep breath and began yelling again. "The nineteen forty-nine World Series line-up for the Dodgers was Jack Banta, Rex Barney, Ralph Branca, Tommy Brown, Roy Campanella—"
A muncher had crawled out of the water and up the rocky crag where they stood. It was only a torso. The hands scrabbled at the rocks and dead, water-softened skin sloughed away in sheets. Smith didn't hear the hungry thing over the crash and boom of the waves and didn't see it until it raised itself up on its arms to bite into the hole-man's crotch.
The hole-man had seen the muncher and had taken a backward step, too late, still shouting out the names of men long dead, his words tumbling out in a rush. "Billy Cox-Bruce Edwards-Carl Erskine-Carl Furillo-Joe Hatten-Gene Hermanski-Gil Hodges-Spider-yaaaaa!"
The hole-man had screamed as teeth tore into his genitals and Smith brought a rock down on the muncher's head. The head had burst apart like a gourd filled with rotten porridge and the rock slipped out of Smith's hands, tumbling over the rocky edge into the sea.
The hole-man had looked at his bleeding crotch. He began to babble, trying to convince Smith he would be okay, that it was just a small wound, that he was not infected.
Smith had no weapons. He had lost his last handgun and a steel hammer in a fight against blind leeches in a city to the south. He had ripped off one of the muncher's arms. He got a grip on one end of the humerus and swung it hard against the rocks at his feet. Most of the flesh and muscle fell away. Now he had a club.
Smith had whacked the club against the PYREX glass covering the hole-man's brain. The glass rang. He struck it again. The glass cracked. He swung the club a third time and the glass had shattered. Smith's hand darted out, reaching into the hole in the hole-man's head and grabbing a sizable handful of soft grayish matter. He scooped it out and flung it into the sea.
The hole-man had watched his brains arc into the sky and drop into the turbulent water. "Gup-gup-jidda-ba-gup," he said to Smith in an admonishing tone. Then he had stepped off of the edge of rock and into the sea, presumably to retrieve his brains.
Smith had headed north.
He did not know he had entered the Canadas until he was chased down by a band of copper-skinned immunes who said they were part of the United Warrior Resistance. They drove a vehicle called a Jeep. They said it was powered by liquid corn. Smith was brought before an elderly man called the shamman, in an echoing hall of marble in the center of a dead city. A hand lettered sign over the shamman read Kill them if they are infected. Kill them if they are French. Kill them twice if they are both. Smith was found to be neither, and was let go with warnings against pilferage, unsanctioned frottage, and the killing of eagles and moles.
--
He had turned south again, entering a vast forest along the foothills of a great mountain range where he crossed the forty-ninth parallel. The land looked familiar. Not far to the west was the place where he had been born.
The place, the facility, where he had been made.
His parents were once a man and a woman. Mutations in the Pandemic virus had turned his mother into Variant A, a hemophagist, a leech. His father had become Variant B, a mindless muncher, an undying eating machine with less intelligence and self-awareness than a shark. Those two had been brought together in forced sexual congress by perverse leech scientists. The leeches of that time could have fertilized an egg in vitro, but even the most advanced of that twisted species liked blood games, so they paired hundreds of leeches deemed Enemies of the Species —meaning they did not support one of the dozen leech empires in the Americas— with hundreds of munchers, taking great pleasure in the carnage, taking away the few fertilized leeches and patiently awaiting the birth of monsters. Those conducting the experiments destroyed most of the resulting children. They were seeking the perfect Variant C, a strong and intelligent mix of both species able to survive exposure to the sun. What they created were mewling, helpless blobs and mindless, hungry mouths. And Smith.
Smith had been and always would be an anomaly.
The facility had been weakened by infighting among the leech scientists, and was ultimately cleansed by a leech who had lived over fifteen hundred years, and his human comrade.
Smith did not have the superhuman powers of leech or muncher. He was extra-human, removed from humanity enough to survive the thing that had killed most people and changed the rest, save for a handful of survivors.
He aged slowly. His immune system may well have been the most advanced, virus-resistant, disease-fighting biological machine on the planet. He could go days without food or drink. Yet he could be injured. His flesh could be torn, his bones could be shattered, and his hope could be broken. One day he would die.
Sometimes he heard a voice. Sometimes it sounded like a girl, sometimes it was a mature woman. When he heard the little girl's voice, part of him felt that she was far away, not only in distance, but in time. "She is not, yet," he once said to himself. Sometimes he thought he was mad.
He was standing in a fall of leaves with many points, in the shadow of a row of evergreens, when he saw the tall thing and it saw him. It was many times his height. It had cloven hooves and a coat of large brown spots. It smelled him and bared its teeth and Smith knew it had the bug. He started to run, and the thing with a neck as long as Smith was tall took chase.
--
The hooves pounded the earth behind him. He heard a snort as the thing bent low and he let out a cry as it bit into his shoulder. Smith lost his footing and slipped out of the grasp of five inch fangs. The beast thundered past him, its hooves sliding in the soft loam of the forest floor.
Smith couldn't outrun this thing, and he had no weapons.
He had to rely on his wits.
I'm in trouble, he thought.
He got to his feet and started to run. He felt blood trickling down his back, tickling his back. He dashed across an old path, turned back, and followed the path to a fork. He heard a wet snort above and behind him.
Fork in the road, he thought.
Fork, he thought.
He began running again, heading toward the thickest growths of deciduous trees, looking for the perfect configuration of bare branches.
Smith saw what he was seeking. A hoof clipped his left shoulder blade and sent him reeling. He hit the ground, rolled, and bounced to his feet running and grimacing against the pain.
He ran under the forked branches he had seen a moment earlier, and the towering beast followed him. It had all the brains of a deer. The beast reared back too late. The slender neck slammed into the V of bare forked branches. The body below still had momentum. The doe eyes rolled as the connection between head and neck snapped like a dry twig.
The body sagged, the head slipped free of the fork, and then the great beast fell to the ground.
Smith leaned back against the trunk of the tree and caught his breath.
"Congratulations," a woman called out. She was standing nearby. She sounded cheerful enough, but she was pointing a crossbow at him. "You've killed a giraffe. The meat is palatable, if slow-roasted."
Before Smith could reply the woman fired the crossbow. A pointed metal shaft darted towards him. The rear end snapped open to reveal prongs like those on a grappling hook. The forward end of the shaft pierced Smith's left arm, pinning him to the tree. The metal prongs held him fast.
The woman came closer. Her smile was wide and pretty, and Smith saw her fangs. She appeared to be a few years older than Smith.
"Come, children," she called out. "It is safe now, and we need not continue the hunt. We have meat."
Smith counted five... no, six young girls as they emerged from the forest. Like the woman, all of them wore shirts and leggings of mottled green and brown. Smith saw the tiniest nubs of breasts and thought that these girls were experiencing pooberty.
One of the girls asked, "What is this?" She had hair the color of fire.
"It is a boy," the woman said.
Two of the girls were disgusted. Three of them appeared very curious. The girl with red hair seemed unimpressed. She crossed her arms and turned to the woman. "Huntmistress, can I kill it?"
User Reviews
Submitted by RoadSong (user info) at 2009-01-01 03:19:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-09-15 18:35:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2008-09-15 17:59:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I was just asking...because I pretty much knew the lineup by heart...without research.
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Yeah, well...
....
.......
I have more hair than you, Mr. Baseball Almanac.
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2008-09-15 17:59:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I was just asking...because I pretty much knew the lineup by heart...without research.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-09-15 17:14:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2008-09-15 16:41:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Where'd you find that old Brooklyn Dodgers lineup?
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http://www.baseball-almanac.com/ws/yr1949ws.shtml
A great site with great recaps.
Baseball is the only sport I can stomach.
It is like chess. Simple rules, with an infinite diversity of plays.
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2008-09-15 16:41:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Where'd you find that old Brooklyn Dodgers lineup?
Submitted by ProseIsDead (user info) at 2008-09-10 01:16:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2008-09-04 14:54:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
McCallum Fiction = AUTO +2
Submitted by Yozz (user info) at 2008-09-04 14:27:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
OK, I'm done waiting for Shlongy to comment on this post.
*Yozz stomps out and slams the door*
Submitted by X54 (user info) at 2008-09-04 11:40:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
This was sort of like reading a synopsis of a much longer story, albeit an intriguing one. Also, how can you smash the head of something which is "only a torso?" How can a torso have hands, for that matter?
Submitted by Adamdidit2u (user info) at 2008-09-04 09:31:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
F'ing Solid
Submitted by PerkMan (user info) at 2008-09-04 07:54:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
You suck at writing. This was atrocious.
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2008-09-04 06:44:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
The hole-man had shouted, "Show me your hole!"
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heh
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2008-09-04 06:17:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked it. Please write more of these and less (i.e. none) of the dumb crap involving bank loans or the Obamas.
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2008-09-04 05:50:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"the wet-slap"
Ha ha. Now, on to the rest...
Submitted by PayMeLater (user info) at 2008-09-03 21:45:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
No Comment
Submitted by BobSandwich (user info) at 2008-09-03 19:49:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Was Solid.
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2008-09-03 19:49:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
ATP +2
Woo!!
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2008-09-03 19:13:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
jackiemac...nice work. i'm sorry i had to push you. not really.
Submitted by BobSandwich (user info) at 2008-09-03 19:11:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Will read later, looks solid.
Submitted by Yozz (user info) at 2008-09-03 18:25:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Is that little girl meant to be Oathmeal's offspring in the distant future? I mean, you got Shongy's in there, why not Oathys?
Submitted by Yozz (user info) at 2008-09-03 17:39:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
STFU you cockaholic*.
* Oathmeal's trademark pending.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-09-03 17:37:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Lord, forgive me my typos.